CTV Is Digital—but It Must Be Measured Like Television

Connected TV (CTV) may be bought programmatically, but it behaves like traditional television. And that distinction matters more than most marketers realize. Treating CTV like a click-driven digital channel is one of the fastest ways to underperform. To truly unlock ROI, marketers need to think—and measure—like a TV buyer.

Here’s the truth: CTV is an impression-based medium, not a click-based one. That single fact changes everything about how performance should be optimized and evaluated.

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The Three Levers That Actually Drive CTV Performance

When it comes to optimizing television, there are three primary levers that matter from a measurement standpoint:

Station
Daypart
Creative

While all three are important, creative is by far the most influential.

Multiple industry studies have shown that creative drives roughly 70–80% of advertising effectiveness across media, including television and digital video. Nielsen, for example, has consistently reported that creative quality is the single biggest driver of ad performance, outweighing targeting and placement combined

But here’s where CTV becomes complex.

Why Creative Optimization Gets Exponentially Hard in CTV

Creative performance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. One creative may perform exceptionally well on a specific station during prime time, yet underperform on that same station during daytime hours—or on a different station altogether.

Now consider the math:

15 stations
4 dayparts
3 creatives

That’s 180 unique combinations to manage, measure, and optimize.

This is where many marketers hit a wall. Traditional digital analytics platforms—including GA4—simply aren’t designed for this level of television-style complexity.

Why GA4 Falls Short for CTV Measurement

GA4 excels at tracking clicks, sessions, and conversions. But CTV isn’t about clicks. It’s about impressions, exposure, and influence across the full funnel.

There is no dedicated CTV view in GA4 because the platform was never built to measure television outcomes. And forcing CTV data into a click-based framework leads to incomplete insights and misleading conclusions.

To win with CTV, marketers need a different measurement approach altogether.

The Case for a Single Source of Marketing Truth

Successful CTV advertisers rely on a unified, privacy-first measurement framework that brings all media together—CTV, digital, and beyond—into a single source of marketing truth.

That unified view should answer three critical questions:

What’s working
What’s not
Where increased investment will drive the biggest return

Without this clarity, optimization becomes guesswork. With it, marketers can confidently reallocate spend, refine creative, and optimize station and daypart strategies for maximum ROI.